1. Problem set : Data Direct Drivers are shipped to connect OBIEE to MySQL. Unfortunately these do not work as you get a message "[nQSError: 16001] ODBC error state: S1000 code: 0 message: [DataDirect][ODBC MySQL Wire Protocol driver]Connections to MySQL Community Servers are not supported. Please contact MySQL to obtain a MySQL Enterprise or Commercial version.."

This is an rpm download and install, you need root to do this so go get the sysadmin to do all that no reboot and no outage needed. DO NOT DOWNLOAD THE ANSI driver as it does not work. You want the one called mysql-connector-odbc-5.2.3-1.rhel5.x86_64.rpm. IIf itt says ANSI it's wrong and you'll get lots of UNICODE errros.

2. Problem Set 2. What entries in ODBC.ini ?

AND where, you may ask is odbc.ini location set ( hint - look at opmn.xml )